One Small Tag to Save Yourself a Lot of Trouble

True and frightening story: if your bag is lost by an airline, after 90 days it is sent to the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama, where all the contents of your (now lost) suitcase are sorted and sold or donated. Ninety-nine percent of bags get picked up at the baggage carousel, but that last percent can be lost for good. All because, for the most part, people end up buying the same unimaginative black bag.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

So, ideally, you'll buy this $26 "This Bag Is Not Yours" luggage tag from Owen & Fred and never have to worry about losing your bag again. Or ever. It's the kind of cool accoutrement you'll want to keep for good.

A few years ago I was at the Rafael Núñez Airport in Cartagena, Colombia. Long story as to why I was there, but I'm at the baggage carousel, waiting for my bag. I see it far down the line. Sadly, it's a black bag (somewhere between 70-80% of airline luggage is black.) This is a common mistake—someone reaching for the same bag as yours, but down in Cartagena with my limited knowledge of Spanish, this was hard to convey.

Most Popular

"Hey man, that's my bag," I said. The man looked at me like a golden retriever that had just seen a card trick.

"Eh? No," he said.

"You have my bag," I said to him. I pointed at it.

"No. Mine," he said. He began to move away.

I began to think of what would happen if he just, well, left with my bag. I had a laptop and a week's worth of clothes in there. This wasn't Duluth, or even Dallas: there was a very real chance that if he left that baggage area I would never seen my bag again.

"Toothpaste!" I yelled at him. He spun around.

"Eh?"

I pointed to a particularly embarrassing stain on the bag, the result of a rather vigorous and ill-timed tooth-brushing session earlier that morning. Suddenly it dawned on him that he might have the wrong bag. He quickly handed it to me, nearly blushing.

"Sorry," he said, repeatedly, "Lo siento."

"De nada," I replied.

All this could have been avoided if I had just labeled my bag correctly, or had been original enough to get a cool tag. The "This Bag Is Not Yours" tag says it definitively.